FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[USee]

110-130 is a pretty standard roster size in football these days.

[Pat Coleman]

110-130 is a pretty standard roster size in football these days.

Agreed -- last time we collected the numbers from all D-III schools, 125 was the average.

[iwu70]

The size of these rosters has little to do with football and more to do with an admissions strategy and imperative.   What is the NFL roster size?   60 or so?  And DI teams ?   Would be interesting to know. . .  Given what is going on at many of these schools in terms of academic cutbacks, it seems to me that the size of football programs has gotten rather out of hand.  IMHO. 

'70

[Pat Coleman]

Yes, the last thing schools want to do is bring in more tuition-paying students in a situation where they need money. 

[USee]

Yes, the last thing schools want to do is bring in more tuition-paying students in a situation where they need money. 

Exactly. And most D1 teams BTW are around 110-140  roster size. The reality is, dollars rule the day in D3, but you also need a lot of bodies to run a football program well

[kiko]

Chasing tuition dollars probably seems unseemly to a fancy school like Illinois Western.

[WUPHF]

You might view the larger roster as a way to share the student-athlete experience with a larger number of college students.  I am as cynical as the next guy, but despite what the CFO and enrollment management types think, I buy in.

[Next Man Up]

Chasing tuition dollars probably seems unseemly to a fancy school like Illinois Western.

But remember kiko, with their substantial endowment fund, Illinois Western can afford doing less chasing of tuition dollars than most. 

[iwu70]

IWU needs to chase tuition dollars just as much as the next . . . having drawn down on their endowment principle in recent years.  The IWU endowment is not all that strong, frankly. . .  so I fully understand why big football rosters are part of the enrollment strategy, even when many guys out have little or no chance of ever really playing significant minutes.  My issue is with the skewed priorities to sports and their costs, when core academic programs are being cut, tenured faculty are being dismissed, and departments and programs eliminated.  This has all happened at IWU in recent years too, and happening at some other CCIW schools as well . . . and the core academic strengths of IWU, traditionally quite strong, have been severely damaged, leading to poor faculty morale.   Many around IWU now call the institution a sports institute . . .  not a strong traditional liberal arts university any more.  And, with the emphasis on job readiness and entrepreneurship, this decline of traditional liberal arts, social sciences and humanities fields, will likely continue to decline.  IWU made some mistakes in institutional strategy, had one failed Presidency, and now finds its traditional academic quality and depth at risk in some areas.  You can't cut your way to academic excellence . . .  surely no shortage of resources or equipment around the Shirk Center . . .  I love my Titans, always support the Titan students, athletes and others, but I think the institutional priorities are not sustainable in the longer term . . .

IWU is not alone in this trajectory . . .

IWU'70 

[Gregory Sager]

IWU needs to chase tuition dollars just as much as the next . . . having drawn down on their endowment principle in recent years.  The IWU endowment is not all that strong, frankly.

IWU has the second-largest endowment of any school in the CCIW.

Cry me a river.

. .  so I fully understand why big football rosters are part of the enrollment strategy, even when many guys out have little or no chance of ever really playing significant minutes.  My issue is with the skewed priorities to sports and their costs, when core academic programs are being cut, tenured faculty are being dismissed, and departments and programs eliminated. This has all happened at IWU in recent years too, and happening at some other CCIW schools as well . . . and the core academic strengths of IWU, traditionally quite strong, have been severely damaged, leading to poor faculty morale.   Many around IWU now call the institution a sports institute . . .  not a strong traditional liberal arts university any more.  And, with the emphasis on job readiness and entrepreneurship, this decline of traditional liberal arts, social sciences and humanities fields, will likely continue to decline.  IWU made some mistakes in institutional strategy, had one failed Presidency, and now finds its traditional academic quality and depth at risk in some areas.  You can't cut your way to academic excellence . . .  surely no shortage of resources or equipment around the Shirk Center . . .  I love my Titans, always support the Titan students, athletes and others, but I think the institutional priorities are not sustainable in the longer term . . .

IWU is not alone in this trajectory . . .

IWU'70 

Like it or not, colleges and universities operate on a bottom line. Those who run the school have the fiduciary responsibility to not only keep the school open, but to keep it in good working condition and to answer the needs of the school's constituents. And for many small schools, that means attracting a sufficient number of students whose tuition money will keep the school operating and operating well. Given the demographic downturn in college-age Americans, the skyrocketing costs involved in running an institution of higher learning, the Covid disruption and its fallout, and myriad other obstacles, meeting those admissions goals is getting more and more difficult for an awful lot of small schools. Athletics has proved to be a very effective means to help ameliorate the problem of drawing students, particularly in D3 where the words "student-athlete" aren't a mere slogan and participation isn't confined to semi-professionals with athletic scholarships. So it's hardly a "skewed priority" to cater to student-athletes, particularly since their tuition dollars pay for those costs that concern you so much.

As for academic cuts, the unfortunate truth is those courses, majors, and programs are victims of the same set of economic obstacles. No sensibly-run school ever cut a program that drew a lot of majors, because in essence those programs pay for themselves. Same goes with the tenured faculty that are getting cut; their departments are not drawing students to enroll at that school. Your insinuation that schools are robbing the academic side to pay for the athletic side is off base. It's the student-athletes at D3 schools that are paying the freight for the academic side, not the other way around.

And as for damage done to traditional liberal arts, social sciences, and humanities fields ... well, we can have an honest debate about whether they have been more damaged by budget cuts; by self-inflicted wounds in terms of programming and curriculum that misread the cultural zeitgeist, reflect radicalized and ideologically unipolar cultural sensibilities, and are the product of entrenched and reactionary faculty cadres; or by the simple fact that the shifting structure of our society has led to a college education becoming the equivalent of what used to be a high-school education, with all of the attendant lack of interest and enthusiasm for the academic side of things that comes with generations that mature later than previous generations did. I think that there's much to be said for the idea that a lot of young Americans go to college just because they're expected to go to college, or because they see it as four years of playground recess for post-adolescents, and that a lot of young Americans who go to college shouldn't be going there in the first place if the ultimate purpose for it is anything other than strictly vocational. I'm with Mike Rowe in that regard; nothing against French lit majors, but the country needs a lot more plumbers, carpenters, pipefitters, and heavy-vehicle operators than French lit majors.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to see a campus filled with young liberal arts scholars steeped in abstract thinking and well-grounded in classical learning. I was once one of those young scholars myself, and I believe that I'm the better for it. But I think that your nostalgia blinkers your perception of just how many young people aspire to follow in those particular footsteps. I don't think that there are nearly as many young people who want that as you think; there's certainly not enough potential philosophy or anthropology or gender studies majors out there to fill the admissions slots of all of America's liberal arts colleges (and pay their way to following that path for four years). Scoff at "job readiness and entrepreneurship" all you like, but the truest words ever uttered by an American president were when Calvin Coolidge said, "The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world." That doesn't mean that the social sciences and humanities aren't important; far from it. But it's probably unrealistic to think that they should be driving the bus of higher education when it's the STEM majors and the majors associated with business and finance that are leasing that bus and buying the diesel fuel for it.

[Next Man Up]

Chasing tuition dollars probably seems unseemly to a fancy school like Illinois Western.

But remember kiko, with their substantial endowment fund, Illinois Western can afford doing less chasing of tuition dollars than most. 

IWU needs to chase tuition dollars just as much as the next . . . having drawn down on their endowment principle in recent years.  The IWU endowment is not all that strong, frankly.

IWU has the second-largest endowment of any school in the CCIW.

Cry me a river.

And there you have it.

[Next Man Up]

. .  so I fully understand why big football rosters are part of the enrollment strategy, even when many guys out have little or no chance of ever really playing significant minutes.  My issue is with the skewed priorities to sports and their costs, when core academic programs are being cut, tenured faculty are being dismissed, and departments and programs eliminated. This has all happened at IWU in recent years too, and happening at some other CCIW schools as well . . . and the core academic strengths of IWU, traditionally quite strong, have been severely damaged, leading to poor faculty morale.   Many around IWU now call the institution a sports institute . . .  not a strong traditional liberal arts university any more.  And, with the emphasis on job readiness and entrepreneurship, this decline of traditional liberal arts, social sciences and humanities fields, will likely continue to decline.  IWU made some mistakes in institutional strategy, had one failed Presidency, and now finds its traditional academic quality and depth at risk in some areas.  You can't cut your way to academic excellence . . .  surely no shortage of resources or equipment around the Shirk Center . . .  I love my Titans, always support the Titan students, athletes and others, but I think the institutional priorities are not sustainable in the longer term . . .

IWU is not alone in this trajectory . . .

IWU'70 

Like it or not, colleges and universities operate on a bottom line. Those who run the school have the fiduciary responsibility to not only keep the school open, but to keep it in good working condition and to answer the needs of the school's constituents. And for many small schools, that means attracting a sufficient number of students whose tuition money will keep the school operating and operating well. Given the demographic downturn in college-age Americans, the skyrocketing costs involved in running an institution of higher learning, the Covid disruption and its fallout, and myriad other obstacles, meeting those admissions goals is getting more and more difficult for an awful lot of small schools. Athletics has proved to be a very effective means to help ameliorate the problem of drawing students, particularly in D3 where the words "student-athlete" aren't a mere slogan and participation isn't confined to semi-professionals with athletic scholarships. So it's hardly a "skewed priority" to cater to student-athletes, particularly since their tuition dollars pay for those costs that concern you so much.

As for academic cuts, the unfortunate truth is those courses, majors, and programs are victims of the same set of economic obstacles. No sensibly-run school ever cut a program that drew a lot of majors, because in essence those programs pay for themselves. Same goes with the tenured faculty that are getting cut; their departments are not drawing students to enroll at that school. Your insinuation that schools are robbing the academic side to pay for the athletic side is off base. It's the student-athletes at D3 schools that are paying the freight for the academic side, not the other way around.

And as for damage done to traditional liberal arts, social sciences, and humanities fields ... well, we can have an honest debate about whether they have been more damaged by budget cuts; by self-inflicted wounds in terms of programming and curriculum that misread the cultural zeitgeist, reflect radicalized and ideologically unipolar cultural sensibilities, and are the product of entrenched and reactionary faculty cadres; or by the simple fact that the shifting structure of our society has led to a college education becoming the equivalent of what used to be a high-school education, with all of the attendant lack of interest and enthusiasm for the academic side of things that comes with generations that mature later than previous generations did. I think that there's much to be said for the idea that a lot of young Americans go to college just because they're expected to go to college, or because they see it as four years of playground recess for post-adolescents, and that a lot of young Americans who go to college shouldn't be going there in the first place if the ultimate purpose for it is anything other than strictly vocational. I'm with Mike Rowe in that regard; nothing against French lit majors, but the country needs a lot more plumbers, carpenters, pipefitters, and heavy-vehicle operators than French lit majors.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to see a campus filled with young liberal arts scholars steeped in abstract thinking and well-grounded in classical learning. I was once one of those young scholars myself, and I believe that I'm the better for it. But I think that your nostalgia blinkers your perception of just how many young people aspire to follow in those particular footsteps. I don't think that there are nearly as many young people who want that as you think; there's certainly not enough potential philosophy or anthropology or gender studies majors out there to fill the admissions slots of all of America's liberal arts colleges (and pay their way to following that path for four years). Scoff at "job readiness and entrepreneurship" all you like, but the truest words ever uttered by an American president were when Calvin Coolidge said, "The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world." That doesn't mean that the social sciences and humanities aren't important; far from it. But it's probably unrealistic to think that they should be driving the bus of higher education when it's the STEM majors and the majors associated with business and finance that are leasing that bus and buying the diesel fuel for it.

i can only speak for North Central, but a plethora of philosophy, English literature, religious studies, art history, social science/history, and anthropology majors is not why the two newest buildings on campus are the 5 year old STEM Center for Science, and the 1 year old Center for Health Sciences & Engineering, or that the School of Business & Entrepreneurship building has recently been completely renovated.

[sncdangler]

IWU needs to chase tuition dollars just as much as the next . . . having drawn down on their endowment principle in recent years.  The IWU endowment is not all that strong, frankly.

IWU has the second-largest endowment of any school in the CCIW.

Cry me a river.

. .  so I fully understand why big football rosters are part of the enrollment strategy, even when many guys out have little or no chance of ever really playing significant minutes.  My issue is with the skewed priorities to sports and their costs, when core academic programs are being cut, tenured faculty are being dismissed, and departments and programs eliminated. This has all happened at IWU in recent years too, and happening at some other CCIW schools as well . . . and the core academic strengths of IWU, traditionally quite strong, have been severely damaged, leading to poor faculty morale.   Many around IWU now call the institution a sports institute . . .  not a strong traditional liberal arts university any more.  And, with the emphasis on job readiness and entrepreneurship, this decline of traditional liberal arts, social sciences and humanities fields, will likely continue to decline.  IWU made some mistakes in institutional strategy, had one failed Presidency, and now finds its traditional academic quality and depth at risk in some areas.  You can't cut your way to academic excellence . . .  surely no shortage of resources or equipment around the Shirk Center . . .  I love my Titans, always support the Titan students, athletes and others, but I think the institutional priorities are not sustainable in the longer term . . .

IWU is not alone in this trajectory . . .

IWU'70 

Like it or not, colleges and universities operate on a bottom line. Those who run the school have the fiduciary responsibility to not only keep the school open, but to keep it in good working condition and to answer the needs of the school's constituents. And for many small schools, that means attracting a sufficient number of students whose tuition money will keep the school operating and operating well. Given the demographic downturn in college-age Americans, the skyrocketing costs involved in running an institution of higher learning, the Covid disruption and its fallout, and myriad other obstacles, meeting those admissions goals is getting more and more difficult for an awful lot of small schools. Athletics has proved to be a very effective means to help ameliorate the problem of drawing students, particularly in D3 where the words "student-athlete" aren't a mere slogan and participation isn't confined to semi-professionals with athletic scholarships. So it's hardly a "skewed priority" to cater to student-athletes, particularly since their tuition dollars pay for those costs that concern you so much.

As for academic cuts, the unfortunate truth is those courses, majors, and programs are victims of the same set of economic obstacles. No sensibly-run school ever cut a program that drew a lot of majors, because in essence those programs pay for themselves. Same goes with the tenured faculty that are getting cut; their departments are not drawing students to enroll at that school. Your insinuation that schools are robbing the academic side to pay for the athletic side is off base. It's the student-athletes at D3 schools that are paying the freight for the academic side, not the other way around.

And as for damage done to traditional liberal arts, social sciences, and humanities fields ... well, we can have an honest debate about whether they have been more damaged by budget cuts; by self-inflicted wounds in terms of programming and curriculum that misread the cultural zeitgeist, reflect radicalized and ideologically unipolar cultural sensibilities, and are the product of entrenched and reactionary faculty cadres; or by the simple fact that the shifting structure of our society has led to a college education becoming the equivalent of what used to be a high-school education, with all of the attendant lack of interest and enthusiasm for the academic side of things that comes with generations that mature later than previous generations did. I think that there's much to be said for the idea that a lot of young Americans go to college just because they're expected to go to college, or because they see it as four years of playground recess for post-adolescents, and that a lot of young Americans who go to college shouldn't be going there in the first place if the ultimate purpose for it is anything other than strictly vocational. I'm with Mike Rowe in that regard; nothing against French lit majors, but the country needs a lot more plumbers, carpenters, pipefitters, and heavy-vehicle operators than French lit majors.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to see a campus filled with young liberal arts scholars steeped in abstract thinking and well-grounded in classical learning. I was once one of those young scholars myself, and I believe that I'm the better for it. But I think that your nostalgia blinkers your perception of just how many young people aspire to follow in those particular footsteps. I don't think that there are nearly as many young people who want that as you think; there's certainly not enough potential philosophy or anthropology or gender studies majors out there to fill the admissions slots of all of America's liberal arts colleges (and pay their way to following that path for four years). Scoff at "job readiness and entrepreneurship" all you like, but the truest words ever uttered by an American president were when Calvin Coolidge said, "The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world." That doesn't mean that the social sciences and humanities aren't important; far from it. But it's probably unrealistic to think that they should be driving the bus of higher education when it's the STEM majors and the majors associated with business and finance that are leasing that bus and buying the diesel fuel for it.

Greg not only hit this out of Wrigley Field, it went over Sheffield, it also went over the El and well out into Lake Michigan.

[lmitzel]

IWU needs to chase tuition dollars just as much as the next . . . having drawn down on their endowment principle in recent years.  The IWU endowment is not all that strong, frankly.

IWU has the second-largest endowment of any school in the CCIW.

Cry me a river.

. .  so I fully understand why big football rosters are part of the enrollment strategy, even when many guys out have little or no chance of ever really playing significant minutes.  My issue is with the skewed priorities to sports and their costs, when core academic programs are being cut, tenured faculty are being dismissed, and departments and programs eliminated. This has all happened at IWU in recent years too, and happening at some other CCIW schools as well . . . and the core academic strengths of IWU, traditionally quite strong, have been severely damaged, leading to poor faculty morale.   Many around IWU now call the institution a sports institute . . .  not a strong traditional liberal arts university any more.  And, with the emphasis on job readiness and entrepreneurship, this decline of traditional liberal arts, social sciences and humanities fields, will likely continue to decline.  IWU made some mistakes in institutional strategy, had one failed Presidency, and now finds its traditional academic quality and depth at risk in some areas.  You can't cut your way to academic excellence . . .  surely no shortage of resources or equipment around the Shirk Center . . .  I love my Titans, always support the Titan students, athletes and others, but I think the institutional priorities are not sustainable in the longer term . . .

IWU is not alone in this trajectory . . .

IWU'70 

Like it or not, colleges and universities operate on a bottom line. Those who run the school have the fiduciary responsibility to not only keep the school open, but to keep it in good working condition and to answer the needs of the school's constituents. And for many small schools, that means attracting a sufficient number of students whose tuition money will keep the school operating and operating well. Given the demographic downturn in college-age Americans, the skyrocketing costs involved in running an institution of higher learning, the Covid disruption and its fallout, and myriad other obstacles, meeting those admissions goals is getting more and more difficult for an awful lot of small schools. Athletics has proved to be a very effective means to help ameliorate the problem of drawing students, particularly in D3 where the words "student-athlete" aren't a mere slogan and participation isn't confined to semi-professionals with athletic scholarships. So it's hardly a "skewed priority" to cater to student-athletes, particularly since their tuition dollars pay for those costs that concern you so much.

As for academic cuts, the unfortunate truth is those courses, majors, and programs are victims of the same set of economic obstacles. No sensibly-run school ever cut a program that drew a lot of majors, because in essence those programs pay for themselves. Same goes with the tenured faculty that are getting cut; their departments are not drawing students to enroll at that school. Your insinuation that schools are robbing the academic side to pay for the athletic side is off base. It's the student-athletes at D3 schools that are paying the freight for the academic side, not the other way around.

And as for damage done to traditional liberal arts, social sciences, and humanities fields ... well, we can have an honest debate about whether they have been more damaged by budget cuts; by self-inflicted wounds in terms of programming and curriculum that misread the cultural zeitgeist, reflect radicalized and ideologically unipolar cultural sensibilities, and are the product of entrenched and reactionary faculty cadres; or by the simple fact that the shifting structure of our society has led to a college education becoming the equivalent of what used to be a high-school education, with all of the attendant lack of interest and enthusiasm for the academic side of things that comes with generations that mature later than previous generations did. I think that there's much to be said for the idea that a lot of young Americans go to college just because they're expected to go to college, or because they see it as four years of playground recess for post-adolescents, and that a lot of young Americans who go to college shouldn't be going there in the first place if the ultimate purpose for it is anything other than strictly vocational. I'm with Mike Rowe in that regard; nothing against French lit majors, but the country needs a lot more plumbers, carpenters, pipefitters, and heavy-vehicle operators than French lit majors.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to see a campus filled with young liberal arts scholars steeped in abstract thinking and well-grounded in classical learning. I was once one of those young scholars myself, and I believe that I'm the better for it. But I think that your nostalgia blinkers your perception of just how many young people aspire to follow in those particular footsteps. I don't think that there are nearly as many young people who want that as you think; there's certainly not enough potential philosophy or anthropology or gender studies majors out there to fill the admissions slots of all of America's liberal arts colleges (and pay their way to following that path for four years). Scoff at "job readiness and entrepreneurship" all you like, but the truest words ever uttered by an American president were when Calvin Coolidge said, "The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing, and prospering in the world." That doesn't mean that the social sciences and humanities aren't important; far from it. But it's probably unrealistic to think that they should be driving the bus of higher education when it's the STEM majors and the majors associated with business and finance that are leasing that bus and buying the diesel fuel for it.

Greg not only hit this out of Wrigley Field, it went over Sheffield, it also went over the El and well out into Lake Michigan.

[bleedpurple]

And as for damage done to traditional liberal arts, social sciences, and humanities fields ... well, we can have an honest debate about whether they have been more damaged by budget cuts; by self-inflicted wounds in terms of programming and curriculum that misread the cultural zeitgeist, reflect radicalized and ideologically unipolar cultural sensibilities, and are the product of entrenched and reactionary faculty cadres; or by the simple fact that the shifting structure of our society has led to a college education becoming the equivalent of what used to be a high-school education, with all of the attendant lack of interest and enthusiasm for the academic side of things that comes with generations that mature later than previous generations did.

This might be the greatest sentence ever written. I'm not professing to understand it completely, but that only adds to its greatness!